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Cigarette-Smoking Man - Sinister
government operative on the fantasy drama THE X-FILES/FOX/1993-2002.
Constantly in a need of cigarette, The Cigarette Smoking Man,
(a.k.a. "Cancer Man") did the biding of a secret cabal of anonymous men
("The Shadowy Syndicate") with names like the
Well-Manicured Man (John Neville) and did whatever it took to keep
"The Project" shrouded in secrecy. CSM first spoke on episode No. 20 "Tooms."
FBI agent Fox
"Spooky" Mulder (David Duchovny) tried
to bring these secrets to the light of day.
Per Duchovny, CSM was "like Nietszche's Socrates - he's the rational
man, saving the masses from their own imagination." In the heat of anger, Mulder once called Cancer Man, a
"Black-Lunged Son of a Bitch."
CSM smokes cigarettes (Morley brand) because as he said: "You
would too, if you had seen what I have seen" (CSM shot & killed
JFK). One his more memorable quotes:
"Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless,
perfunctoral gift that no one ever asks for. Unreturnable because
all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck
with mostly undefinable whipped mint crap, mindlessly wolfed down
when there's nothing else to eat while you're watching the game.
Sure, once in a while you get a peanut butter cup or an English
toffee but it's gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. In the
end, you're left with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened
jelly and teeth shattering nuts, which if you are desperate enough
to eat leaves nothing but an empty box of useless brown paper
wrappers."
In February 1999, CSM's real name was revealed as C.G.B. Spender.
In the climatic two-part series finale of THE X-FILES series,
Spender, thought dead, resurfaced in a desert hideaway.
Even though he had lost his throat to cancer, Spender still puffed
away on a cigarette through the hole in his neck as missiles from
a helicopter gun ship rained down on his rocky retreat.
TRIVIA NOTE: A survey in TV Guide (8/17/1996) found 27.5 % of
readers rated "The Cigarette-Smoking Man" (played by William B.
Davis) as the nastiest villain on TV.
In an interview (Starlog No.
248 March 1998 p. 50) Davis prefers to be called "Il Fumatore,"
the Italian translation.
Actually for his role, Davis (who quite smoking 20 years earlier)
smoked an herbal nicotine free version of cigarette; they smoke
like a pipe but burn quite hot.
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